Suella Braverman, the British-Indian former Home Secretary, has become the latest high-profile Conservative MP to join Reform UK. The announcement was made by party leader and right-wing activist Nigel Farage at a rally for Reform supporters in London.Braverman has represented Fareham and Waterlooville since 2015. She told supporters she had resigned her Conservative Party membership of 30 years. “I feel like I’ve come home,” she said, as she confirmed she would immediately sit as a Reform UK MP.Her defection brings the number of sitting Reform MPs to eight, following recent departures from the Conservatives by Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell.Speaking at the veterans’ event, Braverman criticised the Conservative Party’s current leadership and policies. “I’m calling time. I’m calling time on Tory betrayal. I’m calling time on Tory lies. I’m calling time on a party that keeps making promises with zero intention of keeping them,” she said.She also discussed ‘serious’ national issues: “Britain is indeed broken. She is suffering. She is not well. Immigration is out of control. Our public services are on their knees. People don’t feel safe. Our youngsters are leaving the country for better futures elsewhere. We can’t even defend ourselves, and our nation stands weak and humiliated on the world stage. So we stand at a crossroads. We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender. Or we can fix our country, reclaim our power, rediscover our strength. I believe that a better Britain is possible. And because I believe that is possible, today I’m announcing that I resign the Conservative whip. I resigned the Conservative whip and my party membership, my party membership of 30 years. It’s gone. It’s over today. And because I believe, with my heart and soul, that a better future is possible for us, I am joining Reform UK.”Braverman praised Nigel Farage, saying: “There is only one man in British politics who has been courageously consistent for his country, and that man is Nigel Farage.” She was Attorney General under Boris Johnson and briefly served as Home Secretary under Liz Truss in September 2022. She was forced to resign a month later after sending an official document to a Tory colleague using her personal email. Rishi Sunak re-appointed her just six days after taking office, and she later became an important figure on the right of the Conservative Party.Braverman was sacked from the role the following year after publishing an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in policing pro-Palestinian protests in London.Suella was born in London in 1980 to parents who emigrated from Kenya and Mauritius in the 1960s. She identifies as British Asian. Her mother is of Hindu Tamil Mauritian descent, and her father is of Goan Catholic ancestry, both having roots in India. She grew up in a middle-class household and attended independent schools, later studying law at Queen’s College, Cambridge. She is married to Rael Braverman, a lawyer, and they have three children.
